Peshawar’s historic walled city: Firms, mobility and public services

Policy brief 4 Nov 2019 Firms

Authors

Ancient cities, which were often old walled cities, exhibit peculiar spatial, social and economic forms. Their urban forms are highly path-dependent featuring narrow congested streets, and make retrofitting modern infrastructure extremely challenging. This creates unique challenges for government agencies involved in urban service delivery.
This study examines data to document historical spatial and economic patterns of economic activity to find out where and what clustering of businesses exist.
To document this economic activity, the researchers conducted a survey with 400 businesses located throughout the inner city of Peshawar, Pakistan.
The findings show that the state of public service delivery is generally poor, with power supply and building quality being a primary concern. Most priority problems identified by respondents require empowered, high capacity and well-resourced local governments focused on delivering responsive and accountable governance at the grassroots level.